Nueces Hotel built in 1913, torn down in 1971

The six-story Nueces Hotel between Chaparral and Water streets was the tallest structure south of San Antonio when it opened in 1913. The hotel was razed in 1971 after it was damaged by Hurricane Celia.(Photo: Contributed photo)

The Nueces Hotel was the city’s pride and glory when it opened in 1913. It was too much hotel for a town of 10,000 but local investors believed that the city was being held back because it lacked a first-class hotel.

The Nueces was certainly first class when it opened. The six-story building, the tallest south of San Antonio, was built at Chaparral and Peoples for $413,000. The hotel had 278 rooms, an elegant ballroom, the Sun Parlor and Tropical Gardens.

The Sun Parlor featured Victorian decor and wicker furniture. Later, in winter seasons, the Sun Parlor was converted to the Palm Room with its own dance floor and a revolving globe made of tiny mirrors reflecting light called the Sphere of Fire. Besides the Sun Parlor and Palm Room, the hotel was known for its Peacock Alley with colorful draperies and period design chairs, and the Tropical Garden, enclosed by a lattice fence overgrown with vines.

On its first anniversary party, which was held on Jan. 18, 1914, among those attending were Mayor Roy Miller, bank owner and former mayor Clark Pease, Judge Henry McDonald, and developer H.G. Sherman.

In 1919 the cattle rancher W.W. Jones, one of the original investors, bought out the other investors. Not long after Jones became the sole owner of the hotel the city was hit by the most destructive hurricane in the its history. The hotel served as a refuge during the storm.

Lucy Caldwell, a vacationing schoolteacher from Ennis, described the storm from the hotel. On Sunday morning, Sept. 14, as hotel guests went to breakfast, the rain was falling so thick you could hardly see across Water Street.

“When I say the water was hurled,” she wrote, “I mean it literally. The wind threw the water of the bay exactly as you would dash a bucket of water onto a fire.” It was dark inside and outside the hotel on Sunday evening as survivors rushed in, their clothes ripped away by the force of the storm.

“Each one had a more horrible tale than the preceding one, of floating on doors and mattresses, of helping rescue women and children, of seeing bodies swept into the bay,” she wrote. As the storm raged, doors and windows were crashing in and dark waters were rising in the lobby. At the height of the storm, between 10 o’clock and 2:30 a.m., “the water on Chaparral stood 10 and a half feet and in the hotel lobby it stood even with the top of the desk.”

The lobby of the Nueces Hotel. The hotel, which opened in 1913, was the pride of Corpus Christi. It was said that its nearest competitor for the quality of its food and service was the Rice Hotel in Houston.(Photo: Contributed photo)

Theodore Fuller in “When the Century and I Were Young” wrote that the Nueces provided comforts suitable for visiting millionaires and a gathering place for the local elite. “The hotel’s orchestra played for dancing every evening in the summer and once a week the rest of the year. The Nueces couldn’t depend on the local power plant to furnish its electricity. Nobody thought it strange that it had its own power plant because it was the Nueces.”

A well-known bootlegger during Prohibition was a bellhop at the Nueces called Old Dan. When he was tried for bootlegging, the judge lectured him for charging $6 for a bottle of tequila. “But, Judge,” Dan pleaded, “everybody is getting six dollars for tequila. You know that.”

Clarence O’Rourke, who was called the human fly, scaled the side of the six-story hotel in 1922. At the top, he seemed to dangle in mid-air, as if he had lost his grip, before catching hold and stopping his fall. The performance was repeated at night with a searchlight playing on him as he climbed the walls.

After the port opened in 1926, a new hotel was built on the bluff, the Plaza (later renamed the White Plaza). In order to compete, the Nueces added a 103-room wing. When the Plaza site was cleared three palm trees in the yard of the Redmond house were moved to the lawn of the Nueces Hotel garden off Water Street, next to the Pleasure Pier. The stately palms became the emblem on the hotel stationery, known as Tres Palmas.

On Nov. 17, 1932, a hotel barber, Henry Rudd, was shaving the hotel’s owner, W.W. Jones, when they heard gunshots in the building. Jones ran through the lobby up to the mezzanine where the hotel manager, Arthur Dowd, had been shot to death in his office.

The killer was a man named Isaac Davis whose wife had worked in the hotel as a maid and had been fired. Davis shot Dowd eight times. He was found guilty after a two-day trial and assessed the death penalty.

When the Naval Air Station was being built and hotels were packed, the Nueces put up extra cots in its famous Sun Parlor. During the war, one of the more serious fights occurred at a Junior Coed dance in the Tropical Garden of the Nueces. About 150 civilians and sailors clashed in a brawl when a sailor was refused admittance to the dance. Several people were injured and a sailor received a bad cut on his neck from a broken bottle. After the incident, city police and Navy Shore Patrol stepped up their presence downtown.

A 1952 newspaper ad listed a week’s menu at the hotel. On Sunday there was roast hot house baby lamb with mint sauce; on Monday, casserole of chicken and dumplings; Tuesday, corned beef and cabbage; Wednesday, old-fashioned chicken-pot pie; Thursday, American pot roast with Jardiniere sauce; Friday, redfish steak with Maitre d’ Hotel butter; and on Saturday, veal cutlet with Noodles Polonaise.

The hotel fell on hard times and in 1961 it was sold for $501,000. It was later converted into a retirement home. The final blow came on Aug. 3, 1970. The hotel, which had been a refuge in the 1919 storm, was damaged by Hurricane Celia and condemned by the city.

The Nueces Hotel was razed in 1971 and its contents auctioned. People bought bits and pieces of the famous old hotel. The marble-faced clock from the lobby was purchased and donated to the Museum of Science and History, where it is today. Time caught up with the old hotel that was once the pride of Corpus Christi.

Murphy Givens in 2014. He started writing a weekly column on the history of Corpus Christi and South Texas in 1998. He retired from the newspaper in 2009 but continued to write the column.(Photo: Raymond Gray)